Voters want a say on deficit reduction plans

A Rasmussen[1]poll released today[2] says 58 percent of Americans want to vote on a deficit reduction plan — instead of relying on Congress to make the decision — before it’s imposed on them.

As you might imagine, those polled strongly prefer spending cuts to tax increases[3], with only 25 percent willing to pay higher taxes to close the deficit.

The poll results bring to mind what I thought were insightful comments made by New York Times[4] columnist David Brooks, who last Friday[5] said politicians will make no progress on deficit reduction plans until the American people are on board.

DAVID BROOKS[7]: I mean, you got Marines and soldiers in Afghanistan sacrificing for their country. And you’re not willing to give up your mortgage interest deduction or see a little raise in your capital gains tax?

I mean, that is the country — that’s the question the country really has to ask. And I would say it’s up — it’s not — the change isn’t going to happen in Washington. There has to be a change in the country of voters saying, yes, I hate this, but I’m willing to do it, or else the politicians will go nowhere near it.

And so there has to be some surge in the country first of people saying, yes, we’re serious about this.

The other interesting thing Brooks said about the plan was that it had value in that it sparked conversation and “smoked out” who is willing to seriously discuss the problems and who is not.

But they took the serious things that have to be done, and they threw them on the table. And so I think they did a great service to the country. I think the second thing they have done is, they have smoked out who is willing to have this conversation and who isn’t.

You saw people on the right, like Grover Norquist, and people on the left, like some of the public sector unions, say: Hell, no. We are not talking about this. This is dead on arrival.

While proposed tax increases in the Bowles-Simpson plan are getting all the attention, one fact that gets lost in the conversation is that 75 percent of the $4 trillion in deficit reduction during the next decade would come from spending cuts, including defense, and just 25 percent would come from additional tax revenue.

That seems like a fair proportion, but until the American people are willing to seriously contemplate the very difficult decisions necessary to bring down the deficit, these discussions are going nowhere. Tax increases are going to have to be part of any realistic plan to reduce the deficit, and the Rasmussen poll indicates to me that most Americans aren’t there yet.